3 Ways to Improve Your Search for Love

"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love." —Tom Robbins

In today’s society, the abundance of romantic options, as well as the ease of materializing them, have increased our chances of finding love more than ever before. The downside is that the process of finding the suitable partner has become multifaceted and distressing. The new exciting romantic environment consequently requires a new approach to finding love. Here, I discuss three major adaptations needed in the following romantic activities: (1) the cognitive tools for knowing the partner, (2) the evaluation of the partner’s properties, and (3) the evaluation of the partner’s overall nature.

1. The cognitive tools: deliberation vs intuition

"When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain." —Mark Twain

Deliberate thinking, essential in human life, requires time and typically involves slow and conscious processes, largely under our voluntary control. The abundance of romantic options decreases the efficiency of such a slow and thorough process, and shortcuts are needed. An appealing shortcut is emotional intuition: a fast and automatic dispositional mechanism that expresses past knowledge.

In these abundant romantic circumstances, it is often better to follow our emotional intuition than to engage in elaborate intellectual gymnastics. This is evident in a longitudinal study on newlywed couples, showing that spouses’ intuitive automatic attitudes, not their conscious deliberate ones, are better predictions of marital satisfaction. Intuitive implicit responses have been found to be a powerful predictor of marital happiness (McNulty et al., 2013). However, intuitions may be wrong. Hence, some combination with intellectual deliberations is required. One such interesting combination is developing intuitive skeptical ability that reduces wrong intuitive judgments, alongside our romantic intuition towards right or wrong choices (Sunday Grève, 2023). Another combination consists of two stages: intuitive optimism followed by reflective realism (Sjåstad & Baumeister, 2023).

2. Evaluating our partner’s properties: a checklist vs dealmakers and deal-breakers

“Whenever I date a guy, I think, 'Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?" —Rita Rudner

The most popular way of choosing a partner, especially on dating sites, is by using a romantic checklist. We all know the drill: after compiling an exhaustive checklist of the perfect partner’s desirable and undesirable traits—that may have up to 100 different items—we mark next to each trait whether the prospective partner meets each standard. This kind of search, (in fact, how online dating works), focuses on negative, superficial qualities and tries to quickly filter out unsuitable candidates. The checklist method is useful for eliminating those who are by far below the threshold of possessing certain qualities. However, it undermines the searcher’s major goal, which is finding a good catch, rather than eliminating the clearly inadequate partners.

Back in 1758, Benjamin Franklin counseled his nephew to use knowledge to find a wife: one should proceed like a bookkeeper, he advised—list all the pros and cons, weigh up everything for two or three days, and then make a decision. Gerd Gigerenzer (2007) shows that computer-based versions of Franklin’s rational bookkeeping manner—a program that weighed 18 different cues—proved less accurate than following the rule of thumb “Get one good reason and ignore the rest of the information.” Gigerenzer’s claim is even more obvious when we speak about a longer checklist, which is the typical case.

The checklist method has two major flaws: (a) it lacks any intrinsic hierarchy of importance and hence it ignores the profundity value and (b) it focuses on the other person’s isolated qualities and accordingly fails to consider the suitability value (Ben-Ze’ev, 2019, and here). A better approach to choosing a partner, which deals with these shortcomings, focuses on several significant positive and negative traits to which a substantial priority is given. Significant positive characteristics, such as kindness, wisdom, caring and sensitivity are “deal-makers,” promoting enduring romantic thriving and stability. Significant negative traits, like stinginess, stupidity, egoism and laziness, are often “deal-breakers” and represent profound unsuitability for which we may pay dearly.

The complexity becomes even greater when we consider that only one deal-breaker does not necessarily rule out the candidate. Instead, people seem to follow a rule of "no more than four deal-breakers" before ruling someone out. Hence, we may also speak here about deal-benders (Joel & Charlot, 2022). In this manner, we do not decide whether or not to spend more time and energy in finding our optimal choice, but we deal with cases in which a plausible, salient choice is intuitively cued from the outset before we spend any effort at all (Csajbók & Berkics, 2022; De Neys, 2022).

3. The overall nature of the partner: the best person vs the most suitable partner

“You make me want to be a better man.” —Melvin Udall, in the movie As Good as It Gets

Evaluating a potential partner’s overall value is complex, since it is based upon combining two different scales: (a) a nonrelational meritocracy scale, which gives the partner a personal “score”, and (b) a relational suitability scale, assessing the person’s mate value, while considering the relevance of nonrelational properties to the agent’s wellbeing. The nonrelational scale, which measures the value of stand-alone traits, such as external appearance, wealth and wisdom, is often easy to use and most would agree on the results. The relational suitability scale, which is a non-comparative scale, is more complex, since it depends on personal and circumstantial factors as well as the interactions between the two partners. The two scales are neither entirely dependent nor independent of each other. Whereas the partner’s value on the nonrelational scale is determined regardless of the suitability scale, the partner’s value on the suitability scale is partially determined by the nonrelational scale (Ben-Ze’ev, 2019; 2023).

There is often confusion between these two scales and it often leads to mistakes made by many hopeful daters. They look for the best person (on the nonrelational scale), instead of looking for the most suitable partner (on both scales). An optimal suitability is evident when both partners are able to bring out the best in each other. In this case, close romantic partners behave toward each other in a manner that is congruent with their own self-ideal, spurring them to move nearer to their own ideal self and thus feel good about themselves (Drigotas, 2002).

Relationships Essential Reads

Married to Two People: The Romantic Life of Widows

How to Tell If a Friend or Partner Is a Leaf, Tree, or Root

The search for the best person is endless, while the search for the suitable partner, which takes into account given circumstances and limitations, is restricted. Those who take the second option may be happy to pursue a “good enough” partner (in the nonrelational scale). If you are generally satisfied with your own actions and with your romantic relationship, then there is no reason to ask for perfection in your mate (Finkel, 2017; Gottlieb, 2010).

Concluding Remarks

“The road to finding 'the one' is paved with a bit of promiscuity." —Ryan Erickson

“I love you more than coffee, but please don't make me prove it.” —Elizabeth Evans

Changing our approaches in searching for a suitable romantic partner does not mean we should completely throw away traditional, prevailing methods, but rather limit them, while significantly increasing the use of the different approaches.

Romantic life is certainly not a fairy tale; some even say that there is no happy love. However, without realizing the complex ambivalence of the romantic environment, our romantic choices are likely to be problematic and painful. We should learn to live in a flexible and diverse romantic environment, which includes both the determination we want to see in love, with the uncertainty and hesitation that characterizes the complex, ambivalent romantic environment.